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going to be under. Sar, I went over the MRIs again. This damn thing is very close to a lot of important centers. Speech, motor, facial movements. I need you awake if I’m going to push this dissection to the limit. You’ll get a local and some sedation, but no general except in the very beginning. In exchange, I give you my word that I won’t sing during the operation.”
    Sara mulled over the offer.
    “No singing, huh? ... Okay, it’s a deal.”
    “We’ll use continuous MRI monitoring of the procedure.”
    “But not that little robot you told me about?”
    Again Jessie shook her head.
    “I don’t think he’d improve matters. This will be your third operation. There’s a sort of scar-tissue superhighway right down to the tumor. I can get there through the scar without causing any problems. Getting enough of the tumor so that your body’s natural defenses can take care of the rest—that’s the test. But I was always pretty good at taking tests.”
    Sara reached out and took Jessie’s hand.
    “My chances this time?”
    Jessie pondered the question with solemnity.
    “That depends,” she said finally. “Have you been giving generously when the plate’s been passed around?”
    “Of course.”
    “In that case, I think we’re in good shape. I’m a pretty experienced surgeon, and God only knows you’re a damned experienced patient. Together with the power of your offerings to the church, I don’t see how we can miss.”
    “What if I said I never give anything when that plate comes around?”
    Jessie squeezed her hand and smiled.
    “I’d still tell you we were okay ... because I give—every chance I get. You can’t be too careful in this neurosurgical business, you know.”

    SURGICAL SEVEN, LIKE the floors below it, was a broad circle, serviced by a bank of four elevators and one stairway. The nurses’ station and supply rooms occupied most of a central core, along with the kitchen, conference room, and two examining rooms. Near the elevators was the six-bed neurosurgical ICU. Around the core, with views ranging from neighborhood rooftops to urban vistas, were thirty patients’ rooms, with a total capacity of fifty. The circular hallway between the core and the rooms was known—especially by the nurses—as the Track.
    In addition to the elevators and main stairway, a narrow auxiliary staircase joined Surgical Seven with Surgical Eight, which housed the neurosurgical operating rooms and recovery room. Because of shielding requirements and the massive weight of the superconducting magnet, the MRI operating room was in the subbasement, hewn into the surrounding rock.
    The offices of the neurosurgical faculty, including Jessie’s, were spaced along a broad corridor that extended west from the elevators and connected Surgical Seven with the main hospital. The corridor, lined with black, spoke-back Harvard chairs, also doubled as the waiting area for outpatients.
    Suddenly bleary, Jessie promised Emily she’d be back to finish rounds in twenty minutes or so and headed to her office. What the tension-filled hours with ARTIE in the OR had started, the session with Sara Devereau seemed to have finished off. She badly needed time alone.
    “Contrary to what you might have been led to believe, gender does matter in our business. The two most powerful influences—one positive, one negative—that will define you as a physician will both be that you’re a woman.”
    The words were Narda Woolard’s, a med school professor of surgery, and a role model for Jessie from the day they met. Rather than trying to convince female med students to ignore issues of gender when competing with men for university appointments and other positions, Woolard ran a seminar on how to capitalize on them.
    “The deep sensitivity and empathy intrinsic to most women will make you that much better a physician regardless of the specialty you choose. But those same qualities will make medicine harder on you than on most men ...